HEADING FOR THE CENTURYTony Leah reporting from
one of the most successful Electron software companies

FOR six years the name Superior
Software has stood for quality and quantity in the Electron games
marketplace - a sector of UK computing that hasn't been overblessed
with choice in entertainment, particularly in recent times.

Surprising, therefore, that the
software house that has supported the Electron since the machine's
earliest days has never been paid its due in a computer magazine
until now.

While packing for his firm's
recent relocation from Leeds to Brigg in South Humberside, managing
director Richard Hanson found time to talk about Superior Software's
history and its plans for the future. The company's long absence
from the computer media spotlight may be explained by Richard
Hanson's quiet personality and the fact that he likes his products
to speak for themselves.

Few Electron User readers can
be unaware of the enormous range of titles that Superior has
issued for their machine starting with Centibug in 1983 and running
through to this year'ss Christmas releases.

The number of games to come from
the Superior Software stable is now approaching the 100 mark
- most of them available for the Electron. It's a total that
would have been unthinkable when Richard Hanson began programming
on the Acorn Atom 10 years ago.

He first became involved with
computers during a mathematics degree course at Leeds University
in the late 1970s. By the end of his first year he realised micros
had become more interesting to him than figures, and he switched
to a course in computer science, learning languages like Basic,
Algol and Fortran before graduating with a BSc.

The university didn't have any
personal computers in those days, so to further his new-found
hobby of programming, Richard bought himself an Acorn Atom.

The machine had just been launched
and Richard describes it as "the best cheap computer around
at that time - certainly it was the most useful, as the Sinclair
machines with their tacky keyboards were very limited in their
performance".

Richard wrote about 20 programs
on the Atom - all eventually published by Micropower - ranging
from a space invaders game, which was the first thing he had
written in machine code, to a home budgets program and a star-tracking
program for amateur astronomers.

When the BBC Micro arrived on
the scene Richard wrote a further six Micropower programs of
various types for the new machine, among them World Geography,
which until very recently was still earning him royalties.

In mid-1982, at the end of his
degree course, Richard decided to set up a partnership with fellow
Micropower author John Dyson and Superior Software was born.
By the autumn of 1982 the pair had released their first four
products - Galaxy Birds, Space Fighter and Centibug written by
Richard and Invaders written by John.

"It went very nicely right
from the start", recalls Richard. "We had each put
in £50 to start the company and I think we'd only spent
about £20 of it before the money from sales started to
roll in".

In 1983 came Alien Dropout and
Road Racer from Richard, Froggy and Hunchback from John. Early
releases typically sold about 6 to 7,000 copies, but Hunchback
with sales to date of 26,000 - propelled Superior into the forefront
of BBC Micro software suppliers.

The arrival soon afterwards of
the Electron sparked a feverish burst of activity as the firm's
BBC Micro games were converted to run on the exciting new machine.

It is worth recording that a
notable exception to conversion of the BBC Micro software stock
was Road Racer, due largely to hardware scrolling limitations
which ended hopes of several existing games being converted for
the Electron. "Road Racer is an example of a game that was
never converted. It could have been with a lot of effort, but
it would have meant restructuring it and not using the hardware
scrolling", said Richard.

"But by and large the games
that could be were converted very simply, very few changes needing
to be made. They tended to fall into one of two categories, those
you could convert easily and those you couldn't without a lot
of effort".

As a result of this, several
games in addition to Road Racer that might have been popular
with owners of the new machine didn't receive the Electron treatment.
"At that time we weren't sure if it was worth the investment,
and by the time the machine had established itself the games
were too old to convert", said Richard.

In the event Centibug became
the first Electron conversion, closely followed by Alien Dropout,
Invaders and Fruit Machine which was the first game written for
Superior Software by an outsider.

Because Richard Hanson retained
the rights to non-BBC Micro versions of the Micropower products
World Geography, Constellation and Disassembler, these were also
converted for the Electron.

Also in the shops around this
time was Overdrive, a car racing simulation for the BBC Micro
written by Peter Johnson and later converted for the Electron.
It was destined to become Superior's most successful game with
nearly 40,000 copies sold across both BBC Micro and Electron
versions.

Interestingly the Electron version
of Overdrive eventually outsold the BBC Micro version by more
than two to one. Richard Hanson explains: "I think the main
reason was that it was until recently the only racing car game
for the Electron whereas it had a lot of competition in the BBC
Micro sector".

In fact Overdrive very nearly
missed being an Electron best-seller. "It took a great deal
of persuasion to get Peter Johnson to perform the conversion",
recalls Richard Hanson. "Yet it was a very simple job -
probably only about a day's work and with royalties from Electron
version sales of around 28,000 he did very nicely out of it in
the end".

Towards the close of 1983 business
had grown to such an extent that more hands were needed at the
pump. John Dyson, unwilling to leave his job as a technician
with BBC TV Leeds, was bought out and Richard's older brother
Steve - a globe-trotting food scientist up until that time -
joined the firm. His arrival marked the start of a period of
major expansion for Superior Software, a move into new premises
Richard and John had been running the business from their own
homes - and ongoing success in the Electron marketplace.

During its long history Superior
has occasionally dipped its toe in the water of other computer
makes - though never to any great effect. Its first attempt to
break out of the BBC/Electron market came at the end of 1984
when seven titles were released for the C64.

"They didn't sell particularly
well", said Richard. "We did a little better the next
time around, and some of our releases for other machines have
done quite nicely while others have not been so well received.
Overall there has been little encouragement to move our major
effort away from the Acorn marketplace".

Tempest, released for the BBC
Micro and Electron early in 1985, is regarded as something of
a milestone for Superior because for the first time it inspired
full page, full colour advertising. And it marked the point when
the price of Superior games for the Electron went up for the
first time - from £7.95 to £9.95.

In the summer of the same year
came Repton, another tremendous success, swiftly followed by
Deathstar. Christmas saw the release of Repton 2, Citadel and
the software synthesiser program, Speech.

With sales of 35,000, Repton
2 is the bestselling of the famous series of captivating reptilian
adventures. Counting Repton 3 and the three sets of additional
screens, the series has so far notched up total sales of 120,000.

Mid-1986 saw another major event
take place - an agreement with Acorn to take over publication
of Acornsoft games titles. These included the mega hit Elite
- which has since enjoyed sales of 17,500 in its Superior Software
version - a repackaged Revs including Revs 4 Tracks, and two
Acornsoft Hits compilations.

Christmas that year marked the
release of Repton 3, Ravenskull and Strykers Run. "Although
Repton 3 did not sell as well as its immediate predecessor, all
three titles were big successes which helped us to expand the
company further", said Richard.

At the start of 1987 Superior
produced the first three of its famous Superior Collection series
- two for the BBC Micro and one for the Electron.

"It was a year for consolidating
our success", said Richard Hanson. "One notable event,
however, was our first game for the Archimedes - Zarch by Elite
co-author David Braben, the most skilful author I've ever come
across".

Games tester David Blackburn
checks out Network by Peter Scott for inclusion in a new Electron
compilation

Christmas saw the release of
Life of Repton and the first Play It Again Sam compilation, both
hits.

"Since the start, the Sam
series compilations have always contained four titles, initially
our own but more recently including games from other software
houses", said Richard. "Play It Again Sam has been
a great success story - we're now up to version 10 with versions
11 and 12 lined up for release before Christmas this year".

However, Richard Hanson notes
that Electron disc version sales have not always come up to expectations.
"Superior Collection 3 and the first Play It Again Sam have
been the only Electron disc products that have sold really well",
he said.

Last year Superior broke more
new ground, for the first time approaching a third party developer
for the rights to license a title. The result was a BBC Micro
and Electron version of Palace Software's hit release Barbarian,
followed soon afterwards by Last Ninja from Activision and A
Question of Sport from Elite Systems.

"The move into licensing
has been a success", said Richard, "though it hasn't
always been plain sailing. We also tried to get permission from
US Gold to produce a BBC Micro and Electron version of Outrun
but couldn't pull off the deal. We'd love to produce many more
conversions under licence like Barbarian and Last Ninja and the
reason why we haven't done so is not for the want of trying on
our part".

Superior's biggest sellers at
Christmas were Exile - the result of a two-year project by Jeremy
Smith and Peter Irvin - and Last Ninja.

During 1989 Superior has been
busily adding to its Play It Again Sam series, as well as releasing
licensed titles Barbarian II from Palace Software, Predator from
Activision and Ballistix from Psygnosis. "In fact Superior
Soccer, which has only just been released, is our first original
program in quite a while and we expect it to do very well",
said Richard. "This isn't the result of any deliberate policy
- it's just the way things have fallen into place this year".
Superior produced some titles for the Master Compact as part
of its original deal with Acorn, its products since Repton have
been BBC Master compatible, and it has since gone on to release
programs for the Archimedes. "Sales of our Archimedes products
have not been good overall, Zarch being the exception",
said Richard. "Conqueror and Archimedes Repton 3 have been
disappointing when compared to the sales we have achieved for
BBC Micro and Electron games.

Has Superior ever considered
producing "serious" software for the Electron? "Not
really", says Richard. "Our experience is with games,
a sector of the marketplace which is still very profitable for
us, so there is no great urge to branch out into unknown territory.

"Having said that, we have
just formed a second company called Superior Microcomputing which
may lead to other projects within the computer field.

"Although our software sales
have gradually declined over the past year or two from their
peak, it has been a slow decline and nothing either sudden or
damaging has taken place.

"There remains an enormous
BBC Micro and Electron user base and I feel there is still the
market to sell up to 30,000 copies of a really good product.
Even during the past two years sales of our best titles have
topped 20,000.

"We've dabbled with software
for Amstrad, Commodore, Spectrum and Amigo machines, but the
Acorn market remains the best for us.

"Our commitment to it will
be seen again this Christmas by which time we'll have Superior
Soccer and at least two other original games in the shops. I
don't even contemplate a day when Superior Software doesn't have
at least three or four new Electron games in the pipeline - if
that day ever comes I'm sure it will be a long way off".

This article appeared in the
February 1989 edition of the "Electron User", published
by Database Publications.